The Night I Got Lucky

“You seem like you’re tense. Let me give you a neck rub.” In a flash, he was around his desk and behind me, his hands massaging my neck.

My eyes drifted shut for a moment, then snapped open. “What are you doing?”

“Helping you work out the kinks.” His voice was low, thick, the kind of voice I was sure he used with his girlfriends in bed.

“Okay, okay.” I stood up and spun around. “Is this a joke? Seriously, this is unbelievably cruel if it is.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My VP office! And—” I pointed at him, unable to find the words “—you, acting like this.”

“Sorry.” A confused expression. “That was inappropriate, wasn’t it?”

“Uh…yeah.”

“Geez, what is with me?” He shook his head. “Are you all right? Is it tension in your lower back? Here, let me work on that.” He moved forward, his muscled arm slipping around my hips.

“All right, I’m out of here,” I said. With a nervous laugh I headed for the door.

“Want to get lunch?” Evan said, looking like a child left behind on the playground.

“I’ve got plans.” Odd. It was the response he usually gave me.

Back in my office, I climbed into the chair, and with my feet on the phone book, let my eyes sweep the room. All my stuff was there—no doubt about it—and everyone seemed to think I was a vice president. But it felt surreal, having it just happen like that. I wanted a party, maybe a cake with Congrats Billy! on it in pink frosting. I wanted someone to say, “You deserve it.”

I needed my mom. She would ramble and rave; she would make me believe this was real and I had earned it. I slid the phone closer and perused the speed dial buttons. There it was. Mom.

Two rings went by, then three. I knew her machine would pick up on the next ring, and I’d hear the message, “Sorry we can’t come to the phone. We’ll call you back.” My mother hadn’t changed the message since Jan died, and so it still sounded as if he were running around town with her, about to head home and check voice mail.

The answering machine clicked on, and surprisingly I heard something new. Tinkling piano music in the background, then my mother’s chipper, “Hello! I’m not here right now. I’d love to phone you back. Just leave your number. Ta ta!”

Ta-freakin’-ta? She sounded like Joan Collins on Dynasty. “Mom, it’s me,” I said. “Nice message. Give me a call as soon as you get in.”

I put the phone back on the receiver. What to do now? Work, I supposed, but it seemed I might have a different role now, one I was unclear about.

“Hello, Miss Billy.”

I looked up and saw Gerald, the elderly black man who ran the mail office at Harper Frankwell and personally delivered everyone’s mail each morning.

I greeted him, and waited to see if he commented on my new office.

“Have a lovely day now.” He handed me a stack of mail. He turned and left, whistling an aimless tune.

I flipped through the envelopes—letters from clients, one from a TV station in Dallas, where we’d been trying to get coverage for a new product. And then there was a shiny lacquered postcard. The photo on the front showed a multispired white building. I flipped it over and looked at the printed words on top. The Duomo, it said. Milan.

Below that, in my mom’s tiny, perfect penmanship, there were three lines: The collections are surprisingly tedious! The Trussardi stuff—particularly stale. Love, Mom.

I flipped it back and looked at the front. I turned it again and read the lines a few more times. It appeared that overnight my mother had transported herself, by herself, to Milan and the fashion district. My mother adored fashion. She was always decked out in the latest, and she’d always talked about going with Jan to the shows in Milan, but when he died, so did that dream. Until now. If this postcard was legit, my mother had a real life, something I’d been hoping for her for so long. And if it was true, then she’d gotten over Jan, and in a much shorter time than it took her to recover from the loss of my father.

With that thought, I noticed something different inside myself. Deep inside me, where there was usually a space for wonderings about where my father was and worries that his abandonment might somehow have been my fault—or his disappointment in me—was empty now. Those wonderings and worries were gone. I could remember the pain, the longing, the sadness that used to reside there, but I didn’t feel it any longer. Like reminiscing about a distant love affair, the emotions had vanished.

I took a breath. There seemed to be more room in my lungs now, more room in my head, too. The hours with Blinda must have taken hold. I’d broken the reverse Oedipal thing, and I was free of him.

I smiled to myself in my new office. I felt lighter, happier. Not only had I gotten over my dad, but I’d had a wonderful morning with my husband, I’d been promoted and Evan had flirted with me. Even my mother had begun her own fabulous life. I had no idea how it happened, but in one night I’d gotten incredibly lucky.

I thought of my visit with Blinda last night and the frog she’d given me. Could they have anything to do with this? Intuitively, I answered yes! but that seemed entirely illogical. Yet either way, it didn’t matter. I’d gotten everything I’d wished for. And I was going to enjoy it.

chapter four

When Evan made VP, I had pumped him for every bit of information he possessed about the perks of the promotion. He’d gotten a new computer and cell phone, ditto for new office furniture, and there were no longer limits on client lunches and entertainment, the way there were for the non-VPs.

I rubbed my hands together at my desk now. Time to spend some company money. Then it occurred to me—maybe I had already done that, somewhere in the yawning chasm between my today and my yesterday.

I hit Lizbeth’s button again.

“What’s up, Billy?” she said cheerily.

I still hadn’t seen the girl, and I supposed I’d better “meet” her now so that I didn’t run into her in the hallway and give a blank stare. “Can you stop by my office for a second?”

A moment later, a woman in her early-twenties appeared in my doorway. Her sandy brown hair was worn in artful waves about her very round face. She had wide, startled eyes and a rosebud mouth shellacked with cotton-candy pink gloss.

What’s going on?” she said, taking one of my visitor’s chairs.

“When I made vice president…well, maybe I should say, do you remember when I made vice president?”

“I got hired right after, so I don’t remember the exact day, but yeah.” She looked at me oddly.

“Sure, right. And when was that? I mean when did you get hired?”

She laughed wryly, as if this were an easy question, but then she scrunched up her shiny mouth and looked at the ceiling. “Gosh, when was that?” She looked back at me with a stumped expression. “I can’t remember.”

Just like Evan, I thought. Everyone seemed to assume I’d been in this position forever, but I knew different. It made me feel as if I were playacting. It made everything unreal.

“Billy?” Lizbeth said. “Did you want something?”

I shook away my thoughts about the strangeness of it all. No sense fighting a good thing, I told myself. “What I really wanted to ask you was if you remember some information I got about furniture and technology stipends.”

“Yeah, I think it was in that packet of material from Ms. Frankwell.”

“Great, great. And where do I—I mean we…keep that?”

“You told me to file it at my desk, remember?”

I made a big show of snapping my fingers. “Right! That’s right. Could you grab that for me?”

A few seconds later and she was back with a stapled set of papers, headed New Vice President Information Packet.

“Thank you, Lizbeth. And can you find out for me where the firm buys our computer equipment?”